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Climate change is threatening worldwide crop yields and varieties, and the desertification of Southern Europe and Mediterranean areas is endangering the cultivation of tomato, not only one of the most important cultivated crops, but also one of the main pillars of the global food industry. To minimize its environmental impact, current research efforts in Europe are selecting resilient tomato genotypes with reduced use of water and fertilizers. Still, its commercial acceptance depends on consumers&rsquo, reaction in terms of interests, attitudes, and willingness to buy and pay for this hypothetical resilient tomato. In our setting, a behavioural gap exists whenever despite an interest for the product, and regardless of a positive attitude towards it, consumers are not willing to pay a premium price for this tomato. This paper focuses on Italians, among the largest tomato consumers across the world, and for whom origin emerges as a relevant consumption driver. We carried out a web-survey, totalling 932 responses. We ran three different ordinal regressions, one for each level of involvement in the purchasing process, identifying the factors affecting consumers&rsquo, interest, attitude, and behaviour towards this hypothetical tomato. We prove the existence of a behavioural gap for Italian tomato consumers and observe that this gap widens as consumers&rsquo, preferences for origin increase. Hence, policies developing environmentally sustainable products should not forget how consumer preferences for non-strictly environmental attributes might ultimately affect their propensity to buy and pay.

Control of magnetic domain-wall motion in nanowires has attracted great interest due to the possibility to develop nonvolatile memory and logic circuits. We show that efficient domain-wall pinning can be engineered by growing Co-Fe-B/MgO ultra-thin magnetic films with perpendicular anisotropy on a patterned substrate exhibiting subnanometer steps modulation. The ratio of domain-wall velocity along and across the steps is found to be as high as 70, which corresponds to a variation of the depinning field up to 7 mT demonstrating a very efficient storing pinning scheme. In addition, we demonstrate very efficient domain-wall motion along the 70 nm conducts separating the steps. Our approach is compatible with nanoscale devices and large-scale mass production, opening new opportunities for domain-wall storage applications.

The steady increase in the consumption of fresh and processed tomatoes is threatening environmental sustainability, as water and fertilizers, two crucial production inputs, are becoming less accessible. To this purpose, the research project TomRes funded by the European Commission H2020 research and innovation programme, is currently undergoing to develop an environmentally sustainable fresh tomato. It is thus of paramount importance to understand if final consumers are willing to accept such a potential sustainable tomato and, may be more importantly, if consumers’ interests and positive attitude towards this product will lead to the decision to purchase. Hence, in this study, we exploit a sample of Italian consumers who responded to a web-survey to analyze the existence of the interest-attitude-behavior gap as well as its main determinants. Our results confirm the existence of this gap in line with other sustainable consumption products., Proceedings in Food System Dynamics, Proceedings in Systerm Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks 2019

Gli eventi sismici del 2016 nel Centro Italia hanno messo in luce differenze notevoli nella risposta sismica delle costruzioni in muratura delle diverse zone. In particolare, gli edifici del centro storico di Norcia, a differenza di quanto accaduto in altri centri abitati nel Lazio e nelle Marche, hanno manifestato un comportamento strutturale più che soddisfacente, tenuto conto dell'entità del sisma che li ha colpiti e della ripetizione di più scosse sismiche in un breve periodo di tempo. Nel presente articolo vengono mostrate alcune valutazioni statistiche ottenute a partire dai dati delle schede AeDES che sono state compilate nei sopralluoghi di agibilità eseguiti dai tecnici del Servizio Sismico della Regione Umbria negli edifici del centro storico di Norcia. Dall’esame di queste informazioni è stato possibile correlare il livello di danno degli edifici con alcuni macro parametri strutturali quali, ad esempio: la categoria di intervento effettuato, il numero di piani, l'epoca di costruzione, la posizione della cellula edilizia nel tessuto urbano, ed altri.

L'articolo analizza il comportamento strutturale di una serie di edifici del centro storico di Norcia che sono stati sottoposti ad interventi di consolidamento negli anni '80 e '90. Per questi edifici sono stati reperiti ed esaminati i progetti strutturali presentati a quel tempo al Genio Civile. Associando le informazioni contenute nei progetti con l'osservazione dei danni rilevati a seguito dei sismi del 2016 è stato possibile valutare in modo puntuale l'efficacia degli interventi effettuati.

Shelf-life estimation has become increasingly important due to the growing consumer interest in fresh and safe food products and the European policy indications to consider it as a key issue for the sustainable management of food waste within the supply chains. To date, no legislation on the shelf life date of the most of food products exists. Several studies demonstrate that logistic management and the technology available in the fresh-cut sector would allow to extend the shelf life date of products without compromising their intrinsic quality attributes and to achieve a more sustainable production by a strong reduction of unsold stock. The aim of the study was to segment consumers on the basis of their attitude towards the extension of the shelf life date in the fresh-cut salad sector. On the basis of the clusters found, the paper discusses if the information concerning such technology is a useful tool to inform consumers on product characteristics or if it entails a risk of information overload., Proceedings in Food System Dynamics, Proceedings in System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks 2015

Worldwide, aquaculture is assuming ever more importance in diminishing the pressure on wild stocks in the seas. Prices of feed used in farming fish are increasing, due the rise in demand. Research on sustainable sources of feed was recently intensified and insects as meal to substitute soybean and fish meals and oils seems a promising field. Consequently we explored future consumer attitude toward the consumption of fish farmed on insect meals, as a mean of enhancing the sustainability of the farming system in aquaculture. We focused our attention on Italian consumers of fish and the results show a sensitive consumer, willing to try an innovative product, interested in research to improve the safe-guarding of marine resources., Proceedings in Food System Dynamics, Proceedings in System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks 2015

The recent discovery that magnetic domain walls can be moved under a small current without any magnetic field opens a perspective for a paradigm shift in mass storage design. However, several fundamental questions must be answered before the technology can be considered feasible. This review covers the current understanding of domain wall (DW) propagation in CoFeB–MgO structures with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. These films exhibit a very low density of pinning centers and can be integrated in Magnetic Tunnel Junctions, making them very promising for manipulating multiple domain walls in ultra-high-density spintronic devices. Several important issues are addressed: the physics of magnetic field, current and electric field driven domain wall motion, the characterization of the pinning potential on the nanoscale, the demonstration of artificial storing pinning sites, and the evaluation of domain wall propagation for logic and memory design integrated into complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

Water, food and energy are strongly interconnected. In this study we address this issue taking the lens of financial concerns to investigate the WFE relationship. Specifically, the aim of our paper is to analyze the volatility spillovres between indexes representing the financial component of WFE nexus. We use a multivariate GARCH model with daily data from November 2001 to May 2013. Water is proxy by equity index that represents the performance of the industry involved in water business both at global and local level. For the food and energy sectors we use two sub-indexes of S&P GF-Commodity Index. Our results highlight the existences of a financial nexus between WFE that is particular exacerbated during 2008 crisis. Evidence therefore suggests the need to better investigate the policy options that can be used to reduce price volatility in a framework of a rising relevance of water issues within the nexus., This is a preliminary version. Please do not cite without authors’ permission.